


Universal Constant

by ShevatheGun



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: (also don't worry we don't spend a lot of time there), (isn't there always when Dukat is involved), (not the fun kind), (the truly fucked up kind), Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, But she still loves him and I can't seem to stop her so, Dukat is a fuckboy, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Harems, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Mirror Universe, Naprem is a crybaby, Occupation of Bajor, Prompt Fic, Rough Sex, Soulmates, Terok Nor (Star Trek), There's A Tag For That, alternate universe where Bajor and Cardassia were two of the founding races of the Federation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-29 03:58:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11432682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShevatheGun/pseuds/ShevatheGun
Summary: “There’s a Japanese phrase that I like: koi no yokan. It doesn’t mean love at first sight. It’s closer to love at second sight. It’s the feeling when you meet someone that you’re going to fall in love with them. Maybe you don’t love them right away, but it’s inevitable that you will.” - Nicola Yoon





	Universal Constant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Calamity_Lena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calamity_Lena/gifts).



> " _I'd choose you._  
>  _In a hundred lifetimes,_  
>  _in a hundred worlds,_  
>  _in any version of reality_  
>  _I'd find you_  
>  _and I'd choose you._ "

 

**1.**

It's by complete accident that he falls headlong into monogamy again. He's become accustomed by then to juggling; adept at it. It hasn't ever been what he wanted for himself, this... promiscuity. It simply seemed the most logical solution - benevolent, almost, to spare his current favorite the jealous abuse of her peers. Besides that, it's surreal and addicting to take one's passions so simply, so casually - to pluck a woman from a line like a ripe fruit from a tree, and to consume her with relish, simply to know her taste. It's absurdly decadent. He'd be lying if he claimed he weren't enjoying himself. With so many to choose from, his time off the clock is an exhilarating whirligig of sex and sensuality. He takes pleasure in giving them pleasure - in having them compete eagerly for his affection. Any man would enjoy such a life, he thinks.

But Naprem changes everything. She doesn't try; she doesn't need to try. When she kisses him for the first time, he knows instantly that there will be no others. No one else will ever be enough, in lieu of this. His harem becomes a skin that's grown suffocatingly tight, a molt put off too long. Naprem will be his only, he thinks, frantically, _can_ be his only, cannot possibly be anything less. For the first time in months, he thinks of Athra, guilt squeezing his heart in his chest.

But it's too late. Naprem meets his eyes as fearlessly as ever and her bravery evokes a softness in him he was sure he disowned years ago. From his old skin, he emerges, delicate in her hands, shaking and wet. She reaches up to touch his cheek and he turn to kiss her palm, tenderly. He has longed for this. Every day that she has stood at his side with her sharp tongue and inventive mind, every day that she has made him laugh, every day that she has argued with him, seeming completely unafraid of the consequences - every day she has left him at the door to his quarters with a snide remark, every day she has coolly evaded his attempts at flirtation, every day she has pressed a shaking hand to his arm and murmured praise to her heathen gods that she doesn't think he hears from his sick bed - every day she has asked after his children, every day she has told him her real thoughts about the state of affairs, every day she has talked him through his own decisions, every day she has stood beside him with her shoulders straight and proud, every day she has asked him to be just and to be kind -

every single day, he has been falling in love with her.

"Have dinner with me," he murmurs, knowing that if she finally accepts his invitation, he'll devour her completely.

"You don't want dinner," she says.

"I do."

"You don't."

"With you," he says, "I do." And he means it most sincerely. He wants to do everything there is to do with Naprem. He wants to take her everywhere in the galaxy. He wants her at his side for the rest of his life. They're standing in the open doorway leading to his quarters, and he wants her to come inside.

Naprem shakes her head. She's close to giving in, he's sure of it - her hand is still pressed to his cheek. She tries to withdraw it but he catches her wrist. She looks away, and her voice shakes.

"I'm afraid I can't allow myself to become another thing you've conquered," she says, and for just a moment, he tastes the bitterness of her anger with him. "I like you far too much. To be reduced to an object by you might finally kill me and I-" She takes a ragged, desperate breath. "I want very much to keep living."

"You will never be a thing to me, Naprem."

"We're _all_ things to you," she counters, and her words ring through the air as clearly as if she'd smacked him.

"That's not true."

"You keep women like bottles of liquor in a cabinet," she says. "You have a glass of whomever suits you each night. I won't be something by which you toast the health and longevity of Cardassia."

"Naprem," he says, because she's being unfair to him, but this time when she pulls her hand away, he lets her.

"Goodnight, Gul Dukat," she says, and turns on her heel, and when she thinks she's escaped his sharp gaze, he sees her dab surreptitiously at her eyes and cover her mouth, as though it will erase the way she pressed it to his, standing on her tiptoes. Each step she takes from his side is a physical ache.

He's hers, he realizes, as he lays on his back, staring up at the ceiling through the dark. He is bewitched. He belongs to her with everything that he is, and yet she refuses to belong to him. This knowledge claws at him late into the night, digs its talons into his chest and pulls.

In the dark, he sheds his pride. There's a children's story on Cardassia of a man who lost his riding hound in a sandstorm and wandered for days, searching for her. When it became clear his steed would not return, and that neither of them would be strong enough to return from whence they'd come, he cut himself open and lay in the sand, hoping she would be hungry enough to return to feast upon him. She had indeed returned, smelling his blood, and his body was enough to sustain her the journey home. It is a well known story of bravery and sacrifice between friends.

He'll cut himself open, he thinks, if only to convince Naprem to return to his side.

She won't be kept. And so he resolves to keep no others. He can entice her, he thinks. He must. And she will not be enticed while he entertains other distractions; she will not be one of many. She will be one and only. Or she will be nothing.

And he cannot bear for her to be nothing.

Damar is strangely enthusiastic when he tells him to disband the harem, and to return the women to their families.

"I obey, sir," he says, with obvious relief.

Skrain feels Naprem watching him from the walkway across from his office in Operations. He catches her gaze and holds it for far longer than should be comfortable. She makes him look away first.

He opens himself up, and lays back. And he hears her coming nearer.

He allows himself to be devoured, instead.

 

**2.**

To call him a hedonist would be unfair to hedonists, she thinks. To call him cruel would be to underestimate cruelty itself. He is sadistic in inventive, acrobatic ways. He is utterly, unapologetically debauched.

He's in love with her, she thinks. It's becoming more and more painfully obvious.

She's willing to admit she loses her temper with him. She wants to hurt him, sometimes, and he makes her feel so free to. He accepts her savagery as though it's some kind of precious gift. When she cuts the first line into his face, he accepts it. He accepts the next, and the next, and the next. When they begin to wear away, he cuts them deeper, determined to keep them.

It's almost three years before she realizes the war they're waging no longer has anything to do with Bajor - she's fighting him to retain possession of  _herself_. And she's losing. Badly. He makes her so unsure of herself, and it's equal parts terrifying and liberating.  Naprem has never for a moment questioned who she is, what she wants, what she stands for. She has never lacked the strength to fight, or the will.

One night, while his men lay sleeping, she lures him to the edge of camp and binds him, easily. She should interrogate him properly, but he croons up at her and all but pleads with her to ruck up her tunic and straddle his face, and he eats her so eagerly that she struggles to remember that there's anything else in the world that she could be doing. He escapes his binds just as she's coming, and they wrestle for dominance. He fucks her right there in the dirt, torturing her clit between his sharp fingers.

"We could go anywhere," he's whispering, breathlessly into her ear. "Do anything. Just you and I - imagine what we could accomplish together. No one would dare follow us."

Renul would, she knows, but for a moment, for  _this_  moment where he's pounding inside her like a seismic event, teeth on her shoulder, one hand up her tunic, fondling her small breasts, each thrust making her bones shiver and her cheek scrape against the ground - in this moment, she's dizzy and exhilarated and wanting. In this moment, if she could speak, she'd agree to go with him anywhere - to elope to the stars, to run where no one could catch them, to allow this brief moment of insanity to become her entire life. She'd make a cocoon inside this monster and let her own teeth and fangs grow unchecked; bury herself in him until they're one in the same.

Thank the Prophets he's fucking her too hard for her to even make a sound.

 

**3.**

Naprem is his best friend. Has been since they first met in Physical Conditioning in Year 1. He's never loved anyone so much in his life; he's never known and been known so well by anyone else. He can trust Naprem utterly, doubtlessly, endlessly, with absolutely everything. With his thoughts, with his opinions, with his secrets. With himself. Every time they talk, Skrain becomes increasingly convinced that she's his other missing half - something that fell out of his body on his way out of the egg that he's now finally, finally being reunited with. He's becoming so attached to her it's embarrassing.

They've been separated for too long now and it's killing him. He combs the request rosters for joint posts in the Alpha Quadrant more than can be considered decent for a young upstart Lieutenant, less than four years out of the Academy. The last time they talked, Naprem showed him her new pip - she's made Lieutenant Commander onboard the  _USS Grandeur_. She's beating him. He can't let her beat him. And more importantly, he can't let her succeed without him there to preen; he's so jealous of her and so proud, and he's sure no one is treating her with the proper reverence. No one ever does.

Perhaps that's why he's so quick to invite her to spend her shore leave with him at the Legacy House. He doesn't really think it through, looking back - but he thinks himself grown, now. Above his father's reproach, and beyond asking his permission. The House is his now, as much as his father's. He is a man, with marriage and rank and two small children, and if his best friend is Bajoran that's his own business.

So he brings her into his home, warning only Athra that she'll be accompanying him, and that, obviously, is how they end up on Garak's doorstep not three hours later, with Skrain feeling like his eardrum's been perforated. Naprem has her fists clenched so tightly at her sides he'll be amazed if she can still feel her fingers. Her eyebrow is still bleeding, the cut open and raw, a dark bruise along her orbital bone.

Garak opens the door and looks them over, and Skrain struggles to choose between hiding the matching bruises mottling the left side of his face, or bearing his humiliation openly. At 23, he feels like a wayward child.

The Admiral looks past him to Naprem, and Skrain sees him put it all together in that dagger sharp mind of his.

"My dear Miss Tora," Garak says to Naprem, as though his own godson isn't standing directly in front of him. "I don't suppose you're here for a social visit."

"It's Lieutenant Commander Tora," Skrain says through his teeth.

"Lieutenant Commander!" Garak exclaims. "Already? My, how the Federation has  _changed_."

"I'll take that as a compliment, Admiral," Naprem says. Her voice is lacking it's typical confidence, though she stands straight as always.

Garak opens the door a little wider. "Well," he says, "I suppose I can't leave you outside all night and retain the respect of my neighbors. Come in."

Naprem follows him in - she's been staying very close to him since it happened, putting herself between him and anyone who approaches them. He's not sure if she's doing it consciously. He hasn't pointed it out to her. Every time she's particularly close to him, he can feel the heat coming off of her. It's like being in the protection of a small supernova.

Garak ushers them through the kitchen into the common area, where it's clear he was reading alone; his home is squat and earthen, much like he is, organized in his same ruthlessly efficient manner. Skrain flops down on the settle the way he always does and Naprem sits down next to him, looking slowly around the room like she's expecting to have to field another attack. Watching her makes him feel guilty and tired. His face hurts.

Garak brings them a tray with tea, apparently out of habit, and sets it on the table before them.

"We're sorry to intrude, Admiral," Naprem says. She's too polite, Skrain thinks.

"Not at all," Garak says, though he's still frowning. "Though, perhaps you could be convinced to tell me  _why_  you're here?"

"Skrain invited me to spend my leave at the Dukat Legacy House," Naprem says, before Skrain can tell her not to. She delivers this information dispassionately, as though briefing a superior. "For reasons beyond our control, I'll...need to relocate for the duration of my stay."

Garak looks at her hard for a moment, then looks at Skrain. He studies his face and Skrain feels his ridges flush deeper with humiliation. He folds his arms and turns his face away. Naprem startles him by putting her nova-hot hand on his leg. He looks at her, then at Garak, but Garak's staring at Naprem like she's the only thing in the room, a strange savagery in his expression.

"Am I to understand you were turned out?" Garak asks, voice unnervingly pleasant.

"Not at all," Naprem says. "I left of my own volition." Technically true, Skrain thinks, though not entirely accurate.

"And your effects?"

"I'm afraid that in my haste I misplaced them."

Garak tuts, shaking his head a little. "That was very shortsighted of you, Lieutenant Commander."

"Perhaps," Naprem agrees. "But I find objects to be far more easily replaced than people."

Garak looks at her for a long time then, seeming to take her in. Skrain looks over and does it too - takes in the beautiful brown of her skin, the smooth, short swoop of her ridged nose, the thick bow of her lips, the river green of her eyes. Her science blues always make them look greener, somehow. There is a quiet constellation of freckles along her cheeks, and her Federation issue bun is coming undone, long hair trailing like tendrils of ink over her small shoulders. Her new cut glistens in the low light of Garak's abode.

"Well said," Garak replies, finally. "Idealistic, yes. And naive. But admirable."

He stands up, straightening his top as though its a uniform - he always manages to look stately and well-dressed, no matter his attire. Skrain hates it.

"I believe I'll take the night air," Garak says. It's a transparent lie, even for him. "Perhaps we can break fast together tomorrow." 

"Admiral-" Naprem says, starting to stand, but Garak takes her by the shoulder and forces her to sit. 

"Please, my dear girl," he says. She sits, worry suddenly making itself plain on her pretty face.

Garak looks over at Skrain, then reaches in and pats his cheek. His touch is such a shock, Skrain freezes up. Garak gazes at him and Skrain stares back, wondering what's he's supposed to do.

"It's very rare you make me proud, Lieutenant Dukat."

Skrain's ridges flush dark. 

"I'll endeavor to avoid it in the future, Uncle."

Garak barks out a laugh and takes his hand away. "I have no doubt," he says. And then, he turns and marches out of the house.

Naprem sits very still, watching him go. Her hand is still resting on Skrain's leg.

"I'm sorry," she says, voice so rough with guilt that it shocks him.

"For  _what_?" he asks, a bit more rudely than he wants to. 

"For putting you through all this. It's no secret how the Archon feels about Bajorans, I shouldn't have put you in that position. I just- Prophets, I just  _stood_  there." She turns her head and her cut catches the light. "Like a coward."

"It wasn't your fault."

"It was," she says, and she's getting choked up. "You know it was."

He reaches for her hand before he knows what he's doing - she squeezes tight, and his heart aches. 

"It's nothing I haven't endured before."

"Oh, don't say that," she says, putting a trembling hand to her mouth. "Don't say that, I can't bear it." She squeezes him even tighter. "You're his  _son_ , I- He should  _never_  hit you like that."

"He hit you too, as I recall."

Naprem waves him off, clearly trying to ignore the tears streaking her cheeks like comet trails. "That's different."

"I fail to see how."

"I don't care if he hits me. He has a politician's arm, anyhow."

For once, Skrain doesn't mention that he stands to be hurt much less by the benefit of his physiology, his father's strength notwithstanding. They sit there in strained silence, Naprem weeping silently, holding his hand so tight that he thinks he'd still feel it even if she let go.

He looks at her, and he's never loved anyone so much in his entire life. He doubts he ever will. And so he thinks it wasn't really Naprem's fault, in the end. Naprem is Bajoran - that's an offense, but not a crime. No, Skrain thinks. The crime is his, as it's always been, and his father correctly judged him guilty the minute he walked in the door.

Naprem may be Bajoran, but it's Skrain who's in love with her. That's where the danger truly lies. She cries silently, and he squeezes her hand and she sags into him.

"I'm so sorry," she says into his shoulder. 

He thinks she's is the bravest person he's ever met.

 

**4.**

The second they brought her to Letau, she's been waiting for something like this. 

A level six threat - what was a level six doing at  _Letau Prison_ , of all places? Lightyears away from home for no good reason - at first, she'd been anticipating slavery: her knees bruised from cleaning someone's stone floors, her mouth bloody with insubordination, her skin burning from the looks that lingered too long in all the wrong places. And all those things had come true, but they'd come true behind force fields, they'd come true on the end of phasers, they'd come true in a prison cell meant for killers and for the deranged, of which she was neither. And so she's been waiting - waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting to know  _why_ \- why her? Why  _here_?

And the warden's wondered to. She can tell from the way he looks at her. She can tell from the way he pulls her out of Damar's grip as soon as she's through the office door, legs shaking. She can still feel her ears ringing, her skin burning. They gave her something, the agents of the Order - they gave her something when they were preparing her for transport. To where, and for what purpose, she doesn't know. 

She only knows that he stopped it. That in a few hours there will be hell to pay. That this is hammer, and she is the nail.

They've spoken for hours every night for the past month and a half, but this is different. This is them two in his office, her still shaking uncontrollably, his cool hands soothing and fearless when they squeeze her shoulders.

"You're alright," he murmurs. She can only shudder in response, and she sees pain pinch the bridge of his nose. He runs his hand through her hair and brushes his thumb along her cheek, wiping away the tears she didn't know she was shedding.

He checks her for wounds, running his hands too certainly up her arms, over her stomach and her chest.

"They can't touch you," he assures her, and before she can stop herself, she tucks herself to his chest with a sob, feeling like bugs are crawling beneath her skin. He rubs her back soothingly, murmuring into her hair.

"I'll protect you," he tells her, and it shouldn't sound so comforting. He is her captor, she reminds herself. He's Cardassian. He is as much her enemy as the ones who tried to take her away.

He holds her close with such tenderness and this is the only place she wants to be.

"I swear I'll protect you," he croons, and she believes him, and there's nothing she wants more.

 

**5.**

He finds her in fall - late fall, when her powers are waning to their weakest, like the last sliver of silver before the dark of a new moon. He comes on fast, traps her in a ring of fire with horse and swords and dogs. He bears the torch like a brand, and his face is twisted with relish. He's going to enjoy this, she can tell - when her skin burns like paper, he will bask in the flames. Despite her pride, she begs for her life. She's never done anything wrong by him, she says. She wasn't the witch who cursed that village, she didn't turn their grain to poison in their mouths - the very thought of all those bodies turns her stomach. 

But to him, all witches are the same. All witches burn.

It's by pure luck that the pain in his heart strikes him then - a critically weak heart, wounded years ago. When she drags him inside, both of them sweating and shaking, she feels it: a Death Hex, more powerful than anything she could dispel. 'You will give your life,' that far off sister had declared in his boyhood - 'you will give your life, or be consumed by that ugly heart of yours,' that ugly heart his father gave him.

That witch had burned. Naprem does not.

She shouldn't take pity on him. He came here to kill her. When he's conscious, he still tries - he takes weak, drunken swings at her when she returns with the first cup of tea. He paws at her, whimpers in pain, and though she summons vines from the walls to she restrain him, she cannot help herself.

He would've killed her, if not for luck. He vows, in a rasping whisper, that he still intends to - that he will kill her, that he will resist her wiles, that he will undo her evil hold upon this land. 

"How lucky we are, then," she says, "that I possess greater compassion for you than you for me."

Illness stalks him, filling his lungs with fluid, wracking his heart with pain. All through the autumn, she cares for him. After some time, he seems too tired for threats. After some time more, he seems too embarrassed. With nothing better to do, he speaks - first at her, belligerently, then with growing exhaustion and fear, and then, finally, with curiosity. When he's well enough to sit upright, when he's well enough to walk, he helps her, with clumsy hands, in the kitchen. He asks her about the nature of magic as he watches her grind dried mugwort and bateret in a bowl - he as looks up at the luminescent bulbs growing on the ceiling, and the blossoms slowly wilting in her hair as the world grows steadily darker. She answers his questions, tells him the difference between light magic and dark, explains to him the essence of Balance.

"A White Witch?" he scoffs, when he's done. "There's no such thing."

Because to him, all witches are the same. All witches burn.

When he can walk, he tries to run - mounts his warhorse in the dead of night and heads off into the woods. But the first snow begins to fall and he returns to her, his armor covered with it. It's too late to make it over the mountains, and winter has sapped Naprem entirely of her strength. 

He could kill her. All witches are the same. All witches burn. But he doesn't. He takes off his armor, and he carries her to bed. And through winter, he cares for her. He hunts for her. He cooks for her. He keeps the house standing. When she is too weak, he bathes her. When she is too tired to get out of bed, skin gray with cold, he climbs into bed beside her, and reads to her from her private collection.

"When would anyone collect so many  _books_?" he asks, and she tells him of her adventures in the city, long ago and far away.

When she remembers, she asks about his heart. He waves her off. He's felt no pain, lately, though he doesn't know why. 

And when the first spring thaw comes over the valley, and the ice melts, and Naprem begins to come alive again, she sees something in him - as the color comes back into her skin, and her hair grows longer, and the house bursts with the smell of wildflowers, she sees him begin to  _see it_ for the first time. She feels her heart beat in time with the pulse of the earth. When she puts her hand to his chest, she feels his heart beat too, in the same rhythm, with the same strength. 

"You could stay," she says, somehow a little breathless. Instead of killing each other, she thinks, they could live - it's spring, it's dawn, and their hearts are beating in time. 

He kisses her instead of answering - he kisses her slow and deep and honey sweet, and it's like the sun is rising in her chest. His hands are big enough to hold her. Her body fits to his like it belongs there. The flowers in her hair erupt in a shower of petals, blooming and pinwheeling all around her in a storm of color. The warmth bursting inside her is like nothing she's ever felt. When he presses his forehead to hers, she shivers, electricity running under her skin. She feels like she could die happy like this; her affection for him is a living, molten thing. And she is, of course, a witch. 

All witches burn.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a long time ago, spurred both by a prompt, and by a revelation that - unlike almost any other couple in Star Trek - Tora Naprem and Skrain Dukat get together in every canon Star Trek universe, including the main timeline, the AOS timeline, mirror verse, and AOS mirror verse. I've updated sections of it that I feel were lackluster in the first draft, with the hope that it'll shine a little brighter than it first did. 
> 
> Also: I WILL FILL THIS SHIP TAG MYSELF IF I HAVE TO


End file.
